"Port of Shadows" begins a revival run at the Music Box on 1/25, and is in the Criterion Collection.

Noir revolves on a shorthand of recognition; a cruel fact expertly utilized by Marcel Carné, when he cast two of the most identifiable of French film stars in his 1938 classic, "Port of Shadows" (Le Quai des Brumes). A pressing fog floods Le Havre in the director's pre-WWII drama, but even in the thickest mists, Jean Gabin and Michel Simon, then catapulted to fame recently in "Pépé le Moko" and "Boudu Saved from Drowning" could never find secrecy from their characters' shame-ridden pasts.

During the Nazi Occupation of France, when the country was governed by the German-controlled Vichy administration, 220 films were made by French filmmakers. Bertrand Tavernier is fascinated by this fact: "None of them was anti-Semitic, pro-German, pro-collaboration, or pro-even Vichy. Except for one film which has two dubious lines, you never had a anti-Semitic remark in the films of that time--even though you had plenty in the 1930s. I wanted to try to understand why."

CANNES, France--The best film at Cannes so far this year was made in 1979. That's the melancholy conclusion of Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, the daily trade journals printed at the festival and I didn't have to read the papers to figure that out.

CANNES, France -- The woman hopes to slip illegally into Afghanistan from Iran to save her sister's life. She is helped along the way by a sympathetic doctor. The film is by one of the great Iranian directors. You are already imagining the subtitles at the bottom of the screen, but no: The woman has been living in Canada, speaks English, and narrates the journey into a tape recorder. And the doctor is a black American; they speak English together.